The Minnesota congresswoman rocketed toward the top in the polls after joining the race in June and finished first in the Ames Straw Poll last Saturday.

But one week off that triumph, Bachmann is feeling the effects of the latest GOP comet, Perry. Her momentum, which ought to be on the rise, suddenly shows signs of ebbing amid questions of her electability. Her privileged position as the newest, hottest candidate in the GOP field has been usurped by the Texas governor, who’s also sped past her in the polls.

At campaign rallies in South Carolina on Friday, she told audiences she’s already come from behind to win once so far. Striking a defiant tone, she reminded the crowd — and the political world — she can’t be counted out.

“You may have heard last Saturday there was a little election in Iowa, and I was the No. 1 winner of the Iowa straw poll,” she told an overheated crowd at a midday town hall in Myrtle Beach. “That victory was even more stunning than it was reported — I had only been a candidate for 49 days … and I had spent about half the time in Washington, D.C., fighting against” raising the debt ceiling.

The Iowa line was a new addition to her campaign rhetoric, seemingly designed to signal that the tea party champion would not be pushed out of the conversation by her more mainstream rivals. As most of the GOP establishment looks ahead to a Mitt Romney-Perry showdown — or pines for still more new entrants — Bachmann is intent on making sure Republicans remember she is a force to be reckoned with.

The day after Ames, she RSVP’d to a GOP dinner in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, after Perry announced he’d be speaking there. And this week, she canceled planned events in New Hampshire to spend four days in the Carolinas again — planting a flag in the state where Perry announced his candidacy last weekend and to which he returned on Friday.

Still, in the second time they crossed paths on the trail, there was no mistaking which candidate is the flavor of the moment.

In the small northeastern town of Florence on Thursday, Bachmann drew a crowd of perhaps 150 people to a meeting room at the civic center for an afternoon rally. Even as she spoke, drawing predictable cheers for her crowd-friendly chant of “One! Term! President!”, many in the crowd were buzzing about Perry coming to town.

Perry hit Florence on Friday morning and drew a capacity crowd of about 300 at an 8 a.m. breakfast meet-and-greet, with more waiting outside the restaurant. Though his laid-back remarks were brief and short on specifics, the audience responded rapturously to his old-school glad-handing and baby-kissing.

Bachmann drew many passionate supporters to four public events Thursday and Friday, but she also drew a good proportion of curiosity seekers who weren’t sold on her. While her red-meat-laden speeches invariably fired up the crowds, some of the arrangements didn’t do the candidate any favors.

Bill Pickle, chairman of the Florence County GOP, had a chance to see and introduce both Bachmann and Perry in recent days. He hasn’t made an endorsement, but he said, “If the election was held today, Perry would be [the nominee]. Bachmann would come in second and Romney would be lower on the totem pole.”

Pickle, a 60-year-old retired newspaperman with Texas roots, said Perry is generating excitement at the moment among people who find Bachmann too far right but see Romney as “arrogant” and compromising.

“People in South Carolina, and the whole South, like to be charmed by the good-ol’-boy neighbor type — somebody who will talk to them, not at them,” he said.